Connecticut western news., 1887-06-15
WILLIAM A. WHEELER.
The Ex-yice-President Passes Ava
 Peacefully at His Home.

The death of Mir. Wheeler was peaceful, and it was difficult to mark the moment at which 1t occurred.
 Though vitality had been decreasing slowly through the past six years, Mir. Wheeler retained almost his usual vigor up to perhaps six months ago. From that date he failed rapidly. He was tortured by insomnia and neuralgi On the night of March 3 last he was seized with chill, followed by sinking and then by fever, and for hours his physician thought him dying. He never fully rallied from that at tack, and his mind and body wasted together. There had probably been softening of the brain. For weeks he had been irrational. This brain affliction Was the immediate cause of his death.
 William Almon Wheeler was born in Malone Franklin county, New York State, on June 30, 1919. His father, who had emigrated from Vermont to Malone, died when young Wheeler was eight years old, leaving the family with out means of support William A., through the energy of his mother was kept at the vil- lage school until he was sufficiently learned to take charge of 8 country school, in which po- sition he worked himself into the higi.er studies. He soon accumulated enough to attend the University of Vermont, where he remained for two years, leaving the institution to study law ii the office of Asa Hascall, of Malone. He re- mained there four years, when he was ad- mitted to the bar, and began practice in Frank lin County. He had been pra ticing but few
 
 candidate to the office of District-Attorney of Franklin County. At the close of his term of office he was elected to the Assembly, this time as Whig. He was reelected to the Assem-. bly, and at the expiration of his second term retired for 8 time from public life. His practice of the law soon ceased to be an expressing pursuit, and he became cashier of his local bank, remaining there four teen years. Later he became President of the Ogdensburg and Rouse's Point Railroad, con- tiUuiup in the SuDeryiSiOn of the road fOI eleven years. With the rest of his party he passed out of Whiggery into Republicanism and in 1857 he was elected to the State Senate serving in that body two years, 1s5S-59. Two years later, 1881, he went to Washington as { Representative in the Thirty-seventh Con gross. At the close of the term he retired to private life for four years, but was then re- turned as member of the Forty-frst Congress and thence on to March 8, 1877, he was kept in the House.
 During his career in Congress Mir. Wheeler occupied many positions of trust. In 1875 he was appointed one of the Commissioners o the State Parks, commission which grew out of the Adirondack survey, and in 1876 ht WAS appointed by the Governor as one of th' Commissioners of the State Survey. In 1S6 he was reelected as one of the delegates to the State Constitutional Convention. Itconsistet of 15O members, and MT. Wheeler was choser President of 1t by 8 vote of 100 agains 49 cast for all other candidates. At the time of the Republican Convention in June, 1876 which nominated Rutherford B. Hayes anG Mir. Wheeler as the party's candidates, MT Wheeler was . strong candidate for the frs choice until the stampede occurred which pu Hayes at the head of the ticket.
 After leaving Washington he retired to hi! home in Malone. In 1881 his name was men tioned for Senator, but Thomas c. Platt swep his support away and from that time unti his death MT. Wheeler lived quietly in hif country homo